Arcane Warrior
Chapter 6
The Wilds, the Witches and the Joining
Lumbering down the slick moss-covered stone steps away from the encampment, the four Wardens entered the foreboding wilderness of the Korcari Wilds.
The place was filled to the brim with tall, wild, overgrown trees, some were still standing in their deeply rooted positions, and some had fallen and were now half sunken into the marsh. Those trees still standing were cracked and bent, showing signs of sickness and decay. If they were decaying before, then it was only exacerbated now that the blight was causing the land to wither and die. A cold mist or fog embraced them like long-lost lovers, with various mosses and fungi marring bark, slick with rainwater and whatever liquids might be present in a bog.
Insects, large and small, zoomed to and fro, but for whatever reason decided to give the four of them a wide berth. Murky ponds and lakes, overgrown grass and dead flowers rising from the tainted water. No birds sang in the trees, and no beasts stalked through the festering undergrowth of leaf mold and dead plants to hunt. Only the distant howling of wolves suggested that the Wilds were even inhabited at all; patient, merciless and eager for the unwary to fall into their clutches.
It was a terribly miserable place, the Korcari Wilds, devoid of all warmth or cheer, and a part of him wished he was back at the King's Camp with a hot meal and a roaring fire to chase away the damp and cold.
He'd even prefer a haunted graveyard filled to this unnatural mist.
So, naturally while in the alien land populated by any number of potential horrors and with only three humans at his side, Alim, the frolicky elf that he was, took the time to pick some flowers. "You'll catch your death of cold doing that," Jory chided the elf swiftly plucking a handful of the white flowers the kennel master required.
"It's for a sick mabari," answered the elf, folding the blossoms into one of the leather pouches on his belt. "Besides, maybe it works on people as well? If the darkspawn taint is anything close to as virulent as I've seen-" 'and felt' was the thought that was left unsaid "-we might need some antidotes for ourselves soon."
"Don't worry about it," Alistair stated, drawing a few incredulous stares. "The Order has developed ways to make people resistant to the taint. Once the Joining is completed, we'll be able to keep you from getting sick."
"Really?" asked Alim, clenching his left hand around the hilt of his sword nervously. "Then why isn't this something the entire army has access to?"
"A lot of the ingredients are a bit... hard to come by," explained the former templar, "and it's generally considered to be impractical to produce it en masse. You should ask Duncan, I'm not that much of an expert."
It had not been the first time that Alistair had shrugged off a question with a declaration that answers would come after the Joining, and Alim was quickly getting tired of that response. He didn't blame the former templar; Alistair was a man of duty, bound to obey orders, but the fact that the Wardens kept secrets from their own recruits was troubling.
Surely being better informed would make them better Wardens, no? Besides, it wasn't like hearing any of the more frightening information about the gray wardens would make him turn tail. After witnessing so much and being tainted himself, he was more determined than he had ever been about anything to see this blight end, whether by his own hand or not.
"Let's just get this done," Daveth suggested, shortbow drawn, arrow knocked and ready. "The Wilds ain't exactly a healthy environment, you know."
"Does that mean that you've been here before then?" asked Alim.
"Grew up in a village just a few miles north of here, a little blot you wouldn't even find on a map. My pa took me to the Wilds from time to time, taught me how to hunt, but I always hated it. As soon as I could outrun him, I was off to Denerim. Didn't really like the place much, but there were more pockets to pick than anywhere else, and I was good enough to get by."
"So, you're a thief then?" Jory asked, disgusted to be in the presence of a confessed criminal. "What exactly made Duncan think you're fit to join this noble Order?"
"Well, you'll have to ask him that, ser knight. But yeah, I cut purses, burgled merchants, the usual stuff. Didn't kill on the job; that's just unprofessional, but I had fights aplenty, you bet your arses there are a bunch of thieves' guilds in Denerim, all of them pretty cutthroat, and every one of them wants the whole damn pie. Wouldn't have lasted long if I couldn't fight."
"If you don't mind me asking-" the elf inquired, stepping out of the chilling pool and shivering, both from the cold swamp air and from the sickness eating away at him, "-how did Duncan recruit you?"
"He actually caught me nicking his purse in the market," Daveth explained ruefully. "He's pretty fast for an old bugger, but the guards caught me first. They wanted to string me up right then and there, but Duncan invoked the Right of Conscription before they could even finish tying the noose. Not exactly sure why he'd want someone like me; but for what it's worth, I'm quick with a blade, a decent bowman and a good tracker to boot."
"Those skills would come be useful against the darkspawn, no doubt," stated Alim. They were back on the march now, the softer parts of the ground squelching beneath their feet as they ventured deeper and deeper into the swamp.
"I thought I wasn't Warden material when Duncan conscripted me either, I just hope I get the chance to prove myself wrong. I have to say, it isn't looking too bad so far.
"What about you, Jory? Were you a conscript?"
"Me? Hardly!" Jory boasted, disdaining the notion of having had to be rescued from something, making him the luckiest of the four of them. "Duncan found me in Highever. The local Bann had hosted a tournament in his honour, and I won the grand melee.
"It is a great honour to serve in the Wardens, and I know that I shall return to my Helena with glory."
So, he indeed was the luckiest of them, his past free of burdens or nightmares. Alim didn't know whether to begrudge him of that or raise him on a pedestal. But then again, his charmed life might mean that the knight did not have the mindset of a warden. He had the skills of one true, but he did not have any scars to temper himself against the world.
But who was he to judge, he had spent the entirety of his life except for seven years and a few weeks inside a tower in the middle of a lake.
"And here I thought you hadn't had a woman before!" Daveth laughed. "Always nice having a young filly back home."
Jory's visage became stony. "Helena is my wife, ser, and I will not hear her disrespected. And she bears my child; all the more reason to defend her honor."
"My congratulations to you ser" interjected Alim with a wide smile before Daveth could contribute another crude inference. "New life is always something to be celebrated, and we must seize moments of levity in these troubled times. Have you two been married long Jory?"
"No, only a few months. It pains me to leave her, but…"
"Ferelden calls ser knight, I understand" the elf murmured in sympathy, recognizing his own homesickness in those words. "There's no shame in that."
"And what of you ser elf?" the knight asked. "Do you have someone special waiting for you?"
Leorah's face flashed before his eyes for a moment unbidden, but strangely enough was shortly replaced by Hawke's visage, he had only known her for a few hours, and it would not do to get so attached so soon. Alim mentally shoved the images down to the recesses of his mind. He was a recruit of the Wardens, and he could not think about them now.
"No, not anymore. I thought there would be, but now I'm not so sure."
"A wife would just get in the way mate," Daveth declared, slapping him on the back. "Honest Jory, you should have seen that lovely lass with the blue eyes chatting with our bold Alim here; I swear, she was just about drooling for him."
"She was hardly drooling you fiend." He gave Daveth a shove "we were just having a... a civil conversation," Alim protested. The idea of having a relationship with a human was intriguing, if a bit contrary to the beliefs he was raised with, of course these beliefs came to him in the form of his aunt who had taken a human man as a second husband.
Back in the tower he had had intimate relationships with a total of three people, all of them elves.
All a great deal older and far more experienced than him to boot.
It was intriguing though, as opposed to the thin and willowy body type of elves, humans were taller and more robust. The mechanics of how such a thing would work was completely unknown to him. But these thoughts were all for naught.
They were Grey Wardens, Thedas' defenders against the Blight; he doubted he'd have time for a relationship, even if he desired one. Of course, there were female gray wardens to consider. A relationship with a fellow warden wouldn't distract from the blight since they would be just as honor bound as he... in theory anyway.
Spending fourteen years in a secluded tower, you couldn't afford to differentiate between races or even genders, so it wasn't that he was racist or anything, just a... lack of an opportunity.
"You can be considerate to a woman without wanting to take her to bed."
"Sure sure" Daveth remarked dismissively. "Keep that earnest charm handy, mate. If we do ever encounter any witches in this nasty place, they'll be so smitten with you that our resident templar here will be able to chop off their heads, no problem."
Jory gave a giant scoff of contempt. "You don't really believe those old wives' tales, do you?"
"What tales?" asked the elf, genuinely curious. The books in the tower's library were surprisingly sparse on the topic of stories from this region of Ferelden.
"Some nonsense about children-stealing witches that live in the Wilds," Jory answered, dismissive of the whole notion. "There's no way these Witches of the Wilds could last out here, Daveth. The templars would have hunted them down long ago."
"Shows what you know" Daveth snapped, deadly serious and looking more nervous than ever... a strange combination if ever there was one. "They have strange magic, more so than usual, they transform into birds and beasts to hunt any man they come across. If they catch you, they spirit you away to their camp, rob you of your manly essence and then leave you for the crows to peck at!"
Alim heard a caw that sounded suspiciously like laughter, but when he looked up all he saw was a crow flying away. The first living thing he had seen in this forest.
"Then keep your pants on, and you'll be fine!" Jory shook his head in mock despair. "Perhaps the Wardens should start seeking recruits from places other than Denerim's slums if they end up being such cowards."
"Whatever comes our way we'll deal with it," Alistair reassured the group. The four descended into silence and continued walking farther into the marshland, occasionally ducking their heads to avoid low bearing branches or vines.
Or worse, out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a score of severed human ears threaded on a length of string, but when he turned to focus on it, he saw only another vine. He tried to dismiss it as a trick of the light, but he kept seeing strange occurrences such as pairs of eyes planted into a tree trunk, staring at him.
The elf could feel the power in this place, the power and life held within the trees, the ground and the water. But that life was waning, sick with the very presence of the blight. It was clear to him that the darkspawn were not just monsters, they were a walking disease. Their every step poisoned the earth and all life on it. The natural world was suffering from them being here on the surface, Alim could feel it in his tainted blood.
Alim started, coming to a halt in the muck, head cocked at an angle. "Do you hear that?" he said, covering up the true reason for his startle. For the real reason was not the groaning he could hear in the distance, it was the taint and the tremendous pain that came with it.
It was not too much for him to cope with however, but he had to prevent himself from doubling over and screaming in order to prevent alerting the others to his dilemma. Magic made it easier.
"Hear what?" Daveth asked.
"Listen!" The elf stood there, silent and still, ears twitching, straining to catch every stray sound in the eerie silence of the formerly lively Wilds. Then the noise came again, louder this time, a strangled, agonized cry. "Over there," he gestured to the right, brandishing his staff. "Sounds like someone in trouble, possibly injured."
"Then let's get over there but stay cautious," Alistair cautioned the group. "If you're right, then whatever hurt him might still be around."
Quickening their pace, the four men advanced through the swamp, weapons leveled, scrambling up a soggy hill onto a headland of drier ground, the overgrown but dead path marked with the imprint of men's footsteps and the marks of battle.
Twice more the cry echoed from the deep mists, now loud enough for the humans to hear clearly, the anguish in the man's voice spurring them on.
Breaking through the mist at a breakneck pace, the recruits caught their first glimpse of the enemy's handiwork.
The patrol had been expecting a fight, judging by the weapons clutched firmly in their cold dead hands, clinging tightly to them even in death, but they had been overwhelmed and brought down all the same. Almost twenty men wearing the standard of Highever ripped to pieces at the hands of the darkspawn. They had not gone quietly however, Alim noticed fallen darkspawn in the ranks of the slain, their twisted bodies and crude iron weapons side by side with their would-be victims on the moistened ground.
Only one survivor remained, the owner of the screams that sounded through the mist. Alim knelt to the man's side, handing his staff to Alistair, he examined the horrible gash across his chest that had ripped through tabard and mail before gouging flesh.
The darkspawn swords may be crude iron, but they were wickedly sharp.
"Who's that, Grey Wardens?" the soldier croaked.
"Well, he's not half as dead as he looks," remarked Alistair.
"My scouting band was attacked by darkspawn," the man croaked, blood staining his jaw. "We tried to fight, but there were simply too many! I… I need to warn the others, there are hundreds of the monsters out here!"
"Hundreds?" Jory gasped.
"Easy," Alim reassured him and held up his hands, a soft blue glow encompassing them. The human groaned as the grievous wound stitched itself closed, Jory applied a poultice to the still fresh scar tissue and bound it with some linen bandages and fed him a potion Alistair offered.
"Just take it easy there, soldier. That'll help keep you stay alive, but you should see a better healer than me when you get back to the camp."
"Yes, I have to get back... and warn the others."
"Go, the way back is clear" the elf said softly, trying to calm the hysterical warrior.
Groaning in pain, the human complied, limping in the direction of the camp, his breath coming in shallow gasps. Ultimately, Alim was no great healer. The best he could do was close up the wound and save the man's immediate life, but in the long run...
"Did you hear him?" Jory demanded fearfully. It was clear this first taste of the darkspawn's handiwork had shaken the knight, as he kept glancing back towards the fallen creatures as if expecting them to rise from the dead and strike from behind the moment his back was turned. "An entire patrol of seasoned men wiped out by darkspawn!"
"Calm down, Ser Jory, we'll be fine if we're careful," Alistair reassured.
"Those soldiers were careful!" snapped Jory. "I know the Couslands, and they do not bring ill-trained men into the fight! How many darkspawn can the four of us slay? A dozen? A hundred? There's an entire army out there!"
"There are darkspawn about, but we're in no danger of wandering into the bulk of the horde. We're a small party as well, smaller than the King's scouting bands at any rate.
"If we move quickly and carefully, we should be able to avoid any fights we can't handle."
"How do you know that?" came the knight's petulant inquiry. "I am no coward, but this is foolish and reckless. We should turn back."
"Overcoming these dangers is part of our test, Ser Jory," Alim reminded him, not facing the rest of them, lest Alistair recognize the signs of the taint. "Listen, if Duncan is right and this truly is a Blight, then we're going to face far sterner odds then this to save Ferelden. And what about the other scouting parties? They should at least know what happened to their comrades here."
"Too right, mate," added Daveth. "I haven't gotten my boots all muddy just to back out now! But if you want to turn tail, ser knight, that's your business."
"Know this, Jory," Alistair said, each word burdened with the gravity of this newest revelation, "all Grey Wardens can sense darkspawn. I promise you, no matter their number or their cunning, they won't take us by surprise. That's why I'm here."
"Another Warden talent?" inquired Alim.
"Yes, I'll be able to show you how it works once the Joining is done."
"Of course, you will" he said, honestly beginning to worry about how much time he had left, for the amount of pain he was in was magnifying by the minute. He held out his hand to where he could feel Alistair's presence through the taint, he was almost certain that Alistair could sense him too, for his staff, and once he felt it in his glove, he drew it back.
"You see, ser knight? We might die, but at least we'll be warned about it first," the former thief quipped with an undisguised grin.
"That is…reassuring?" remarked Jory, anything but reassured.
"That doesn't mean I'm here to make it easy for you," Alistair stated bluntly. "Let's get a move on. We have a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time to do it in."
Now he was entirely certain that Alistair knew what was wrong with him.
'Well, we're off to a swimming start,' thought Alistair as the four Wardens continued their mission. He had half-expected that under his command, all of the new recruits would die in the first five minutes, but it seemed his lackluster leadership skills weren't yet that terrible.
The former templar was a bundle of nerves at this point, he hated the responsibilities and worries that came with taking command, and he never would have agreed to escort the new recruits if Duncan had not requested it.
The fear of failure haunted him more than he would like to admit. Death wasn't nearly as scary to him as failing, he was a Grey Warden and would die eventually, but the thought of betraying Duncan's trust or screwing up somehow, compromising their mission and leading people to their deaths was where real terror lay.
Of course, he could only do so much without the recruits giving their own best efforts. Privately, Alistair was disappointed in Jory. The man was a knight, skilled in arms and experienced in battle, yet he seemed to shirk away from danger in spite of these advantages. He was no poor fighter, Duncan would never have recruited him otherwise, but his reluctance to fight darkspawn was worrying.
As was his apparent contempt with secrecy, the Grey Wardens were an order where secrecy was a matter of life and death. They kept many of their own in the dark, but for good reason. Over the centuries, the order had purportedly stumbled upon and recorded a a wealth of forbidden knowledge.
With luck however it would simply prove to be his nerves getting the best of him, and hopefully they would settle once he had slain a few of his natural enemies.
Daveth was a mixed bag. Alistair had been raised by nobles, fairly decent ones all things considered, and was tutored further by the Templar Order, neither of which held much love or sympathy for career criminals. Still, the former thief had not shown the same trepidation as his knightly colleague, and his tracking skills might prove useful in the days to come.
That left the elf, Alim. Alistair had only a basic understanding of what life was like for the mages of Ferelden, the elven ones even less. He knew enough however to know that that as much as he might have complained about his own tumultuous upbringing, he had it easy by comparison. Most of the elves he had met were either slavishly meek or self-destructively angry, but Alim came from the tower, a place he had never been and didn't understand.
He had heard Jory say that Alim was a knight enchanter. He knew even less about that particular branch of magic than he did about any other, but he did know that the last warden to reach the level of Master of Arms, the highest honor awarded to grey warden warriors, was a knight enchanter who had also achieved the level of Archmage, the highest honor granted to a grey warden mage.
That one warden was rumored to have personally killed tens of thousands of darkspawn in her lifetime.
If Alim Surana was anything like Ariadne Trialmont then his worthiness to join their order was higher than any of them.
But the Joining had claimed the worthy before, and he was already dying from the taint, if they didn't put him through the Joining soon...
But that raised even more questions, when had he been tainted? They had not run into any darkspawn yet, it had to have been before he had even arrived at Ostagar.
Maybe even during that ghoul attack that Duncan reported... but that was three, almost four days ago, and most people succumbed within hours.
Ten minutes after they had left the slaughtered patrol behind, Alistair froze beneath a canopy of moldering pines. "Alistair? Everything alright?" asked Alim.
"To cover, everyone. Now!" came the urgent hiss. "Get ready to fight!"
Sword belts flapping, the four Wardens darted further into the swamp, concealing themselves behind an ancient tree, its exposed roots plunging deep into the mire. Alim drew his blade, not yet igniting the blade lest the violet glow and betray their position.
The Wilds were quiet and still under the blanket of fog and Alim shivered in the knee-high water. It would be easy to declare Alistair's warning an overreaction, but he remembered how Duncan had anticipated the ghoul ambush, and he now understood as he felt a stirring in his blood, pushing him to kill, slash, rip and tear apart these unnatural monsters whose very existence spat in the face of creation.
"What's going on?" Jory demanded. A stern glare silenced him, so he had to be content with leaning against the fungus-ridden bark and peering into the mist.
Then that terrible and distinctive stench wafted in, and instinctively Alim clamped his mouth shut to avoid gagging. Jory was looking especially pale and shaky, and Daveth was visibly restraining himself from vomiting in revulsion.
Alim glanced from behind the tree at the loathsome figures that emerged from the mist.
The darkspawn were here.
There was a dozen of the monsters, each a twisted mockery of life. Their flesh was an unhealthy shade of grey brimming with weeping sores and lesions, while veins of black blood pumped visibly under the scars covering them from head to toe, the result of ritualistic self-mutilation, and from hairless heads their blank white eyes stared outwards.
None of the darkspawn were equipped in the same manner; their armor was mostly a crude patchwork of leather and rusted iron, while their weapons were heavy, clumsy instruments of crude iron. Even so, some of them had augmented their arsenals with gear looted from the dead. They shuffled forward not in disciplined ranks, but as a shambling mass, snarling and growling, displaying rows of crooked, knife-sharp teeth.
Abruptly, their leader brought his hooked blade skywards and hissed through razor-sharp teeth, halting those behind. It was what Duncan had described as a "hurlock", one of the more common breeds of darkspawn. Vaguely, it resembled a human, if a human had been flayed of all his skin and forced to stand in a cesspool, while this particular example also possessed a bloated left arm upon which a leather-bound shield hung. Examining it closely, Alim realized to his growing horror that the leather was in fact human flesh, the bloodied skull hanging from its belt a sign of the victim's fate.
Behind the creature came three "genlocks", dwarf-sized darkspawn that scuttled in their leader's wake with foul toothy grins, hunched ape-like bodies, bat-like ears listening for any stray sound, sunken blank eyes studying the landscape. They weren't patrolling.
They were hunting.
Behind the foliage, the Wardens were deathly silent, though not without conscious effort. The seconds crept by like hours, and for Alim, the pain wracking his body was nearing unbearable levels, though he was thankful that he couldn't yet understand what the darkspawn were saying, if they were indeed saying anything. Accompanying the agony of the taint like it's ugly twin, the stirring in his blood was now a boiling, or at least it felt like it, making him feel a sensation reminiscent of the pins that accompanied a limb losing blood circulation, urging him to massacre the abominations.
The old tales had not conveyed a fraction of the horror of the darkspawn, and the elf clenched his trembling hands around his weapons to drown out the sensations nearly driving him into insanity.
"Daveth." Alim's voice was barely above a whisper, "take the hurlock and the archers with your arrows, then draw your daggers and we'll engage the rest in close range."
Nodding, Daveth knocked an arrow onto the bow's string. In the quiet of the Wilds, the creak of the silvery-blue ironbark as he drew the cord past his ear seemed booming in the silence of the marsh. The hurlock heard it clearly, letting out a serpentine hiss as it made to strike at the prey.
Daveth's arrow hammered between the beast's eyes before it could take any steps towards them, black viscous blood gushed from the wound like a fountain, and it fell forwards and hit the ground somewhat anticlimactically with a loud thump. The three recruits burst from their concealment, ripping their legs free of the muck and charging the darkspawn ranks, war cries drowning out the angry howls of the enemy.
Lighter and faster than the humans, first blood went to Alim as he swept a genlock onto it's back with his staff and plunged his now ignited sword into its chest. It was strange how the fear and pain vanished in the presence of action, swept away in the exhilaration of combat and all the guilt that came with it. There would be no moral ambiguity in this fight, no lingering concerns about leaving widows and orphans behind, or that he'd be slaying otherwise good men just following cruel orders.
The darkspawn were a menace against all life, unworthy of any mercy as they refused to give any in turn, and the elf gave an arrogant, boasting laugh as he slashed and swept into their ranks, begging the monsters to come and be killed.
A previously unseen hurlock rose to meet that challenge, swinging a pair of cruelly crafted axes. Blocking one blow with his staff, the impact reverberating along the steel, Alim leapt back and sucked in his stomach, so the next blow struck only air. The elf seized the given opportunity, and the darkspawn was shrieking in agony as his sword opened a gash in its chest and his blunt staff was forced into the gash and though it's body, stabbing clear through into its mockery of a heart.
"Is that the best you can do? Come on!"
The rest of the recruits fought with equal fury beside him, trying to bring down as many darkspawn as possible before they had the chance to bring their superior numbers to bear.
Jory was no meek soldier despite his reluctance in the face of such horrors, fending off two darkspawn simultaneously before beheading one of his attackers.
Those darkspawn equipped with bows found themselves in an archery duel with Daveth, the rogue sniping them off before they could target those occupied in melee, one shot an arrow at him before he caught the arrow inches from his face, stabbed the genlock attempting to sneak up behind him with it, strung his own bow with it and shot the darkspawn that tried to shoot him.
Their ambush had paid off; half of the enemy's number were dead or dying as they pressed the assault, and as Alim brought down a genlock with a vicious slash and a hurlock with a bolt of spirit energy, he allowed himself to think that they could succeed.
And then a loud roar cut into the din of inhuman screams and the clashing of blades.
To the east, more darkspawn emerging from the mist and bounding over a small hill. Their leader was the largest of the creatures Alim had seen yet, a Hurlock taller even than King Cailan, its golden armor decorated with severed heads, braids of hair and other trophies of its kills, its brutish hands brandishing a massive two-handed maul in one hand and a greatsword in the other.
'I swear, when this is over...'
With a barked command, the darkspawn at its flank sent a flurry of arrows at them, black shafts and wicked, barbed points hissing like rain.
Yelling in pain as an arrow slashed open his right cheek, Alim locked blades with a hurlock, desperately holding his own against its monstrous strength. The creature's throat swelled, and the dying elf disengaged and leapt away just as the foe vomited forth a stream of thick black bile. A stray arrow, fired by a darkspawn archer into the dense melee, slammed into the hurlock's side. Never one to pass up a good opportunity, Alim cut the beast down as it cried out.
"Alpha!" Alistair bellowed at the large darkspawn, almost reconsidering his duty as their non-combatant darkspawn detector, a garden of thick shafted vile arrows had blossomed on his shield. "Daveth, put it down!"
"Sorry!" the former thief yelled, parrying a genlock's wild blows with his short sword and dagger. "In a bit of a fix here, mate!"
"We have to pull back!" Jory declared, putting his opponent down. "We're going to be slaughtered out here!"
In that moment, Alim made a judgement call that would have no doubt looked horrendously foolish in hindsight, taking off towards the archers in full sprint. Dimly, he heard Alistair shout at him to turn back, but he had no choice; they were pinned between the two groups of darkspawn, there was no turning back. The only way out of this trap was to break the jaws. It was a risk, but to stand there under the murderous fire of the darkspawn archers was certain death, and by the time the others finished off the first group, they would be torn to pieces.
Plus, he was sick and dying anyway, if his last action was spent saving the lives of the others, then so much the better. At least mages would not be known for always resorting to blood magic if pushed into a corner.
The alpha must have realized the elf's intentions, for the beast immediately began howling at his fellows, pushing them behind him with the giant war-hammer and flat of its sword. Alim kept going, running up the hill as quick as he was able, springing up to his feet every time his boots slipped on the ground, slickened with gore in addition to already being a marshland. An arrow glanced off his left shoulder, but fear, anger and his own sickness gave the elf speed, a snarl bursting from his lips as he cut the first of the archers down.
A magical barrier surrounded his body. One of his few talents outside of his knight enchanter magic was barriers and force fields, and hopefully he could avoid being hit by that hammer, even if only for a while.
Howling its own bestial cry, the alpha moved to intercept the would-be Warden. The maul fell, barely missing Alim and pounding into the turf. Parrying a blow from one of the archers, the elf brought up his staff up just in time to block the alpha's sword strike, the metal ringing from the impact. Arms screaming in protest, Alim stabbed low only for the darkspawn to casually parry it away, the maul delivering a punishing blow to his shield.
Falling onto his back as the barrier flashed brightly but didn't fall, Alim rolled away from the maul's next strike. The ghastly shrieking of the darkspawn and the clash of blades suggested that Daveth or Jory had finally put the first group down and had come to his aid, but at that moment the alpha looming over him, blank white eyes glaring hatefully at him behind that monstrous gold helmet was the only thing that mattered.
The maul fell and his blade rose to meet it, Alim holding the blade horizontally above his head to block. The magically sharpened edge cut straight through the crude iron maul and the thing screamed in rage. The alpha lashed out in a frenzy, dropping what was left of its hammer and taking up the greatsword in both hands, bringing it down again and again and again to break through the elf's stalwart defense. Alim tried to dodge to the side of one of its strikes and stab, but on contact with that enchanted gold armor his blade fizzled out and dispersed. Knocked back onto the soft, blood-soaked marsh ground underneath him, he couldn't even attempt at rising from this position as the alpha brought its blade down upon his barrier again and again.
It was going to kill him.
Desperately searching for a way out of the corner he had been backed into, Alim grabbed the hurlock's discarded maul. Having cut the head off, the shaft ended in a crude point. A point which he immediately used to ram at the alpha. Channeling magic into his body to augment his strength, the makeshift pike pierced the darkspawn's armor and penetrated deep into its torso, just a few inches shy of its heart.
The greatsword fell from the hurlock's grip and grabbed the bloody shaft with one hand and began to pull, drawing him in toward it. It snarled in his face beneath its helmet. He didn't know what the alpha intended on doing once it drew him in close enough, but he didn't want to find out.
His strength still augmented by the magic suffusing his muscles, he pulled makeshift weapon free and rearing it back before slamming it point first down on the monsters armored head, caving in the gold metal and crushing the darkspawn's head.
The Wilds were still once again. The remaining few darkspawn had been brought down by the other recruits, and Alim paused to catch his breath and survey the carnage before him. Between them, the three had slain twenty-three darkspawn with no losses of their own, though all had been injured in some fashion; Jory held his side gingerly, nursing a blow from a darkspawn mace. Daveth boasted numerous minor cuts, clean and untainted, unlike himself.
The cut that blood-coated arrow left on his cheek was dripping with black blood. This new taint was only serving to make what was already inside him worse. He cursed silently, wiped the blood away and burned it from his gloves with a magical fire and healed the wound.
"First blood," the elf breathed, wiping off the worst of the darkspawn gore with a handful of long grass.
"Maker, that was… I can't believe we actually did that!" Jory crowed.
Daveth gave a small smirk at this. "Told you mate. We are supposed to be Wardens, after all."
"Well done, everyone," said Alistair, picking the arrows out of his shield. "Now, we should see about getting that blood. Plenty of darkspawn to choose from." When the recruits turned to gather their trophies, Alistair's expression grew serious. "Are you alright Alim? That was rather risky of you, wasn't it?"
"Necessary, though," Alim replied. "We were pinned down, and it was just the distraction we needed. Sorry if I gave you a fright there" Alim said, thinking it better not to mention the semi-suicidal intentions behind the rush.
"Well, we're all standing, that's the most important thing here. Just try not to run off by yourself in the future; Duncan wouldn't exactly be pleased if I had lost our most promising recruit so soon."
"Oy! Were right here you know!" Daveth claimed indignantly, "he's right though Daveth. We could both stand to take a page out of his book" came Jory's response.
"Deal" Alim said, chuckling slightly at Daveth and Jory's bickering, somewhat embarrassing at his expense.
He only did what he did because it was necessary, that and the fact that he was already dying. He didn't want either of them to ever have to 'take a page out of his book'.
The Warden recruits set about the grisly task of gathering up the darkspawn blood. At the encouragement of the others, and as his own last act of revenge, Alim filled his vial with the blood of the hurlock alpha. Smiling in satisfaction, Alim slipped the vial into his belt pouch.
"Come on then, the treaties await."
Aedan Cousland was not faring well. He had escaped the unexplained massacre of his family, his subjects, and even his beloved Iona... all at the hands of that treasonous snake Rendon Howe and his men. He retreated south towards Ostagar to warn his brother of last week's tragedy, only for this to befall him.
He was embattled with darkspawn. The first time he encountered the monsters he was lucky enough to face only one, for he was too shocked by the monstrosity and was wounded but managed to slay it all the same.
Even so, he was infected.
Over time he came face to face with more of them, each band larger than the last, and this latest one he feared he would not survive. He had managed to slay all but four of the ten-man band, an alpha, two archers and a genlock brute.
It was all he could do to keep the vile arrows away with the family shield and parry the alpha's blows with his family blade. He almost regretted retrieving the family weapons from the vault now, almost. Sure, they would be kept out of Howe's slimy hands, but now he feared they would fall to the darkspawn.
It was then, when all hope had faded from his heart, that the darkspawn archers pinning him down were both taken down by a arrows and bolts of mana while the genlock was tackled and pinned to the ground with a greatsword. He took advantage of the hurlock's sudden distraction to behead it with a roar of rage.
Looking in the direction of his evident rescue, he saw that it was four gray wardens. Aedan sighed in relief and dropped his weapons, he followed them shortly afterwards, falling to the ground in a boneless heap.
They went over the next rise and saw four darkspawn harassing a lone human. He was tall and handsome, that much was clear even if he was knelt on the ground and desperately trying to stay alive, with long dark hair his own and a stubble.
However, it was also clear that this man was tainted, far more so than himself in fact. His skin was deathly pale and waxy with black veins dancing across his neck and face, his bloodshot eyes a sickly yellow.
"My Lord Cousland!" Jory exclaimed, clearly recognizing the man, bending his knee to the nobleman. Between the two groups, the darkspawn had been crushed, and with the danger past, Jory felt confident enough to indulge in the finer points of noble etiquette. "I'm overjoyed to see you alive. After what happened to one of your scouting parties-"
"What? In the Maker's name, has something happened?"
"One of your scouting bands was attacked and brought down by the darkspawn close to the fortress," Alim explained. "Only one man survived but was in no shape to press on."
"That was not my patrol," explained Aedan, "I am Aedan Cousland, and I have come to warn my brother Fergus of Howe's treachery. Howe's men stormed our castle, killing everyone inside."
"Maker's breath..." Jory gasped in disbelief.
"They didn't even spare the children... or my beloved Iona" with his message delivered, Aedan collapsed in tears at his tremendous losses.
'Iona? That's an elven name...' Alim thought, looking at the crying man 'but this human noble cries over an elf?' He had heard many stories of human nobles seducing elves into their beds only to discard them without a second thought, not even caring if they died.
The nobleman started as if suddenly remembering something importanr. "Amethyne!" he exclaimed in a panic "Iona had a daughter, Amethyne is her name. You must go to Denerim and find her and... take care of her." He whispered, filled with despair that he could no longer marry Iona and raise Amethyne as a daughter as he had so wished to do.
"Amethyne? I shall do this; you have my word." Alim told him, ignoring for the moment the fact that he would die soon as well without treatment.
He sighed in relief "thank you ser" Aedan said, picking up his magnificent silver sword from the ground before pointing it at his chest, before he could plunge it home Jory grabbed his hand and shouted, "what in the world are you doing Lord Cousland!?"
"Easy Jory, that man is tainted. He will die a slow and painful death, the Joining could cure him, but he is too far gone."
"What are you saying?" Jory demanded, aghast at the notion. "If the joining can cure him then let's take him and return to Duncan!"
"Still got to find those treaties mate," Daveth reminded the knight. "Duncan's counting on us."
"I will not abandon a good man just for the sake of some old vellum!" snapped Jory. "He is too far gone! If we wait any longer, he will become a ghoul who's only desire is to murder as many people as possible before the taint destroys him." Alistair responded, trying to talk some sense into him.
"The elf's tainted too! -" Alim's eyes widened, how did they know! "- why not just kill him instead of waiting for a cure as well!" Jory shouted "he's been tainted longer, yes, but he's managed to suppress it! He's not as far along as-" "you dare insinuate that some elf is stronger than the noble son of house-"
"Enough!" Alim barked, silencing the argument with a glare. "Could we please try to remain professional here?"
"Stay out of this you filthy knife-ear, you-" Alim cut Jory off from his enraged rant by punching him across the face, knocking the large human to the ground, "you go too far! You are NOT a knight; you are NOT a warden! You are a petulant child who lashes out at the easy target when things don't go his way!
"You are a COWARD!" Jory, shocked at his outburst could only stare silently, ashamed of himself.
With the argument settled, they turned to Aedan "do you have any last requests, Lord Cousland?" Alim asked, "yes actually, the sword and shield I carry are heirlooms of my family. Take them back to camp with you and give them to my brother. Take my message of Howe's treachery to the king and avenge my family.
Lastly, find Amethyne and take care of her. I would have married Iona and raised the girl as my own daughter, but now..." Aedan doubled over in pain, the taint within him growing more and more painful.
His eyes softened, this nobleman was a good one, if only he had lived on to serve as an example for future generations of nobility.
Aedan slipped the sword in-between the cracks in his armor into his heart, ending his life and preventing him from becoming something monstrous. Taking the weapons to give them to Lord Fergus, the Wardens continued on their way, Alim heard Daveth mumbling under his breath. "Everything all right there, Daveth?"
"Just regretting that it wasn't me who punched him. Bloody knight was grating on my last nerve with his constant blubbering." Jory said nothing, still steaming silently that he had his manhood stripped of him by an elf.
"Yes well... I understand that he was upset because of his lord dying in front of him, but he went too far with the slur. Up to this point I had thought you a good man Jory, you have a long way to go in earning my trust again." Jory merely grumbled, sending dark looks towards him and Daveth.
"On that note, let's see about finding these treaties, shall we? If our luck holds out, we've seen the end of these darkspawn hunting parties."
Their luck did not hold out. The numbers of the darkspawn grew ever thicker as the four pressed deeper into the Wilds, and four more times they engaged scouting parties patrolling the swamps for fresh prey. Luckily enough, they had managed to eliminate them all without suffering serious injury, but Alim was not foolish enough to believe that their luck would hold out forever.
They had managed to find a cash of well-made chasind weapons and armour that they could sell for some extra money, the bodies of the missing missionaries that he had heard murmurings of in camp Rigby and Jogby, father and son and men of the cloth who had come to spread their faith to the wilder folk, and a decorated lockbox with a note that said to return it to a woman named Jetta.
So, when Alistair finally announced that the abandoned outpost was just ahead, they had to restrain themselves from jumping in joy.
It wasn't much to look at, an old and ruined tower rising out of the muck, the roof having been brought down by time and the elements, the outer walls covered in slick moss, fungi and creeping vines. The floor was covered with rot and rubble and try as he might Alim could not imagine it having ever been a base for the Order.
Whatever glory that had been here was long gone, only memories and shadows of what had once been remained. "Are we sure the treaties survived after all this time?"
"They should have," said Alistair. "The chest and lock were designed to absorb a lot of punishment, and like Duncan said the treaties themselves were enchanted. They'll be in here somewhere, I know it."
"When exactly has magic ever been reliable enough to... uh" the others just shook their head at Jory's faux pas.
"Uh, Alistair?" Daveth asked, pointing towards the debris. "Did the chest happen to look anything like that?"
Within the debris of the central tower sat the chest, broken beyond repair. The heavy oak wood had decayed to the point that it had caved in upon itself, and judging from how weak the wood looked, it had to have happened quite some time ago. There was no sign of the treaties, and a search through the rubble proved to be fruitless. "Waste of bloody time," Jory griped, kicking away a rotten beam "to think that we risked our lives for nothing!"
He didn't even mention Lord Cousland, afraid to rile up the others further. Plus, even he knew that Aedan would not have lasted till they got back to camp.
"Let me guess; you can't track the treaties down?" Alistair asked Daveth in a vain gesture.
"Sorry mate, I'm a good tracker but not that good. There's no way to tell when the chest was broken, and unless those treaties are witchified to keep any old filcher from nabbing them, I'd say they're long gone."
"No, Alistair or I should be able to detect them if that were the case" Alim shot Daveth down with a shake of his head.
Alistair's temper darkened, and Alim recognized the look of frustration that passed over him, that resentment that so much valor and effort could be for naught. It was clear that Alistair blamed himself, believed he had betrayed his mentor's trust.
Seeing what was happening, the elf to tried to turn him from that dark path. "It's not your fault, Alistair."
"If not me, then who?" the Warden retorted hotly.
"Whoever took the scrolls? Whoever decided to leave them out here in the first place? I don't know..."
"Well, well, what we have here?"
The four turned at the strange voice, and that was when Alim first saw her, descending down the ruined steps of the tower.
It was a girl— no, "girl" implied a weakness and fragility that the intruder stalking slowly and calmly towards them quite simply did not possess.
Her pale body was hard and lithe, the product of a harsh existence that did not allow for many comforts, and despite himself Alim felt his gaze travel to the deep swell of her breasts. The cleavage of which was hidden only behind the thin laces that held together the upper portion of her purple vest. There was a jewel encrusted gold ornate necklace adorning the curves of her lovely neck. Velvet sleeves covered her arms to the wrist on her right arm and to the elbow on the left, her shoulder protected by a leather shoulder guard decorated with raven's feathers, she wore a black leather forearm guard on her left arm, while her slender hands bore black leather finger-less gloves. She walked with a considerable self-assurance, black leggings peeking out from beneath a tattered skirt designed out of old belts that had been sewn together, and knee-high black leather boots completed the rather formidable image. Her semi-long hair was raven black and pinned to the back of her head so as too not hinder the view of her neck, and her lips were as wide and full as any man could ever want, her cheekbones high and noble.
But it was her eyes that struck Alim the most; a bright golden beneath her dark lashes and deep purple eye shadow, gazing upon the four companions with an intensity that was unsettling... and in a strange way, enticing. They were a hawk's eyes, calculating and cold and beautiful as they darted from Warden to Warden, seeking to determine their intentions or their utility… or their weaknesses.
No, "girl" truly wasn't the right word to describe her, for no mere girl would consider approaching four strange, heavily armed and potentially hostile men so openly. She was a reflection of the wilderness around her; strange and beautiful yet terrible, capable of being challenged but never to be disrespected, and Alim watched with a wary eye as she paced about them, a dragon prowling around them but disguising the movement as a seductive saunter.
The woman was a dragon, beautiful and enticing and seductive, but when the prey took the bait...
"Are you a vulture, I wonder?" she mused in a melodious lilting voice. "A scavenger poking amidst a corpse whose bones have been long since cleaned? Or merely an intruder, come into these darkspawn filled Wilds of mine in search of easy prey?"
It was then that Alim noticed the blackened staff she held, it was as long as she was tall and wooden in construction, unusual as most mage staves he had seen were metal, at the tip was a black bird's beak with feather and bead ornamentation. His breath caught in his throat. The young woman was a mage, and of unknown power and skill no less. It made sense, he supposed. Who would dare approach a strange band of warriors unless they had skills of their own to protect them? The others must have realized it too, given how swiftly Alistair tensed and Daveth whimpered.
"What say you, hmmm?" the young woman demanded. "Scavenger or intruder?"
"Neither, as a matter of fact," Alim stated calmly. "We are Grey Wardens. In truth, considering that this tower once belonged to the Order, I could ask you the same question."
"'Tis a tower no longer," she remarked, as if they had not noticed its current state of decay. "The Wilds have long claimed this desiccated corpse." Her hooded eyes darted back and forth, examining them for any threat posed against her person. "I have watched your progress for some time. 'Where do they go?' I wondered. 'Why are they here?' And now you disturb ashes that none have touched in so long. Why is that?"
"Don't answer her," Alistair hissed in warning before the elf could reply. "She looks Chasind, and that means others might be nearby."
"Ooh!" the mage said sardonically, throwing her hands into the air in mock terror at the templar's warnings. "You fear barbarians will swoop down upon you!"
"Yes," the former templar remarked dryly. "Swooping is…bad."
"She's a Witch of the Wilds, I tell you!" Daveth squawked, eyes bulging wide with fright. "We shouldn't be talking to her."
"Witch of the Wilds?" repeated the young woman, eyebrow raised in a gesture of obvious disdain. "Such idle fancies those legends, have you no minds of your own?" Her raptors gaze settled on Alim. "You there, elves are not frightened little boys. Tell me your name, and I shall tell you mine."
"Don't do it, mate! Once she knows your name, then she'll be able to ensorcel you for sure!" protested Daveth.
It was well-meaning advice and considering Alim had no idea of what powers the young woman wielded, or what her intentions were, he could understand the need for caution. The old fable of names having power was true enough as well, but time was running out. Within the space of a few days, the darkspawn horde would pass through this region of the Wilds and destroy everything in their path, they needed to retrieve those treaties now if the king's army had any hope of receiving the aid of the gray warden's traditional allies.
"I am Alim Surana of the Circle of Magi milady, and a recruit of the Grey Wardens." He said with a bow, "might I know your name?"
"Now, that is a proper greeting, even here in the Wilds. You may call me Morrigan," the mage responded, giving the briefest hint of a smile at the respectful tone. "Shall I guess your purpose? You sought something within that chest, something here no longer?"
"Here no longer!" snarled Alistair, fixing her with the fiercest glare he could muster in his exhausted condition. "You stole them, didn't you? You're some kind of sneaky… witch-thief!"
Morrigan scoffed at this. "How very eloquent, how does one steal from dead men?"
"Quite easily, it would seem. Those documents are Grey Warden property and I suggest you return them."
"I will not, for 'twas not I who removed them!" Morrigan responded hotly, meeting Alistair's glare in kind. "Invoke a name that means nothing any longer if you wish, I am not threatened."
Alim moved to de-escalate the situation before she decided to walk away, judging them to not be worth her time or attention. "Then who did remove them, if you would be so kind in telling us Lady Morrigan?"
"Twas my mother, in fact."
Behind him, Alim could hear Alistair barely stifle a snicker. "Your mother?"
"Yes, you oaf, my mother," came the sorceress' acid toned retort. "Why, you assume I spawned from a log?"
"Could you take us to her?" Alim asked, resting a hand on Alistair's shoulder in a silent message to keep quiet.
"Now there is a sensible request," said Morrigan with an enticing smirk "I like you."
"I'd be careful if I were you," Alistair whispered, fingers tensing around the hilt of his sword. "First it's 'I like you', then zap! Frog time."
Turning on her heel, Morrigan began to walk deeper into the Wilds with a seductive sway to her wide hips. "Follow me then, if it pleases you. Or not. 'Tis meaningless to me either way."
Without hesitation, Alim followed after her. "Let's go, everyone."
"Hold on just a second. Are we sure this is a good idea?" asked Alistair, falling in behind swiftly. "I want to get those treaties too but following a strange woman deeper into a swampy forest filled with darkspawn doesn't seem like the smartest move. I mean she is an apostate, after all. If the Chantry knew she were out here, they'd have templars combing through the Wilds to find her and rightly so."
"You think that all apostates are untrustworthy then?" Alim asked with a frown.
"I think this one definitely is."
"She's a Witch of the Wilds!" Daveth repeated. "She'll have us all in a pot for sure!"
"If the pot's warmer than this forest, it'd be a nice change," remarked Jory, taking up the rear. "I have heard it said that the Wilders are deceitful and cowardly by nature, but if this woman can bring us to the treaties, what choice do we have?"
'Pot calling the kettle black, Jory?'
"None, Jory," said Alim, lengthening his stride to keep up with the dark-haired sorceress making her way through the marsh. In the end, they were committed, and if his instincts about the apostate were wrong, then the Wilds would be the last thing they would ever see.
"None at all."
A woman of her word, Morrigan lead them deeper into the forest, and in a direction that seemed to be well known to her.
The group of four walked for about thirty minutes, not meeting anything or anyone on the path. The others began to fidget, frightened that she was using her magic to create an illusion that made them think they were going one way, while in reality they went another and headed straight into a pit of darkspawn.
Even Alim, who had to use every bit of magic at his disposal to suppress the taint, might not be able to sense it if that is what she was doing. As it was, he might have lasted into tonight, maybe until midday tomorrow, but with the second exposure of that archer's blood, the sickness was getting far worse. Were it not for his magic he might have already succumbed.
As it was, he would only last till midnight.
As they walked down the path, the shadows seemed to deepen. The trees towered more ominously overhead, and the mist twisted and danced around them. A trick of the light?
Eventually they reached a rather large clearing with a ramshackle hut at the center, there was a large lake to one side that looked far too clear to belong in a swamp.
In front of the hut sat a small rickety rocking chair as well as an old fire that had not seen use for many days. Small moldy bones surrounded the pit in neat piles. As the group approached the hut, the door creaked open and out stepped a woman, hobbling into view from behind the door.
She was the very picture of a witch, wild white hair and a robe formed mostly of thick black furs and dark leather. Hanging down her back was a heavy cloak trimmed in fox fur, quite striking and delicately stitched. She carried a basket filled with large acorns and other items wrapped in red cloth. Seemingly without even noticing the men gathered before her or her own supposed daughter she sat herself down in the rocking chair with a belabored sigh before setting down her basket.
"Greetings, mother. I bring four Grey Wardens who…" Morrigan started, but her mother cut her off.
"I see them, girl." Morrigan immediately went silent, quickly stepping to the side of the older woman while remaining a respectful distance. The mother's eyes, the same fierce instinct gleaming in them as her daughter's, studied each Warden in turn, perhaps spending a second longer than was strictly necessary on Alim. She smirked. "Much as I expected."
"Are we supposed to believe you were expecting us?" Alistair asked mockingly. Both Morrigan and her mother glanced at him for a moment amusedly.
"You are required to do nothing, least of all believe. Shut one's eyes tight or open one's arms wide, either way, one's a fool." Alistair's eyes widened slightly. Daveth meanwhile, was still trying to work his way through his old fears.
"She's a witch! We shouldn't be talking to her!" he hissed, standing as far away from the two women as he could.
"Quiet, Daveth! If she's really a witch, do you really want to make her mad!" The mother smiled.
"There's a smart lad. Sadly, irrelevant in the larger scheme of things, but it is not I who decide. Believe what you will." Alim's eyes narrowed as he tried to work his way through what she had just said. Before he could ask, she turned back to him. "And what of you? Does your elven mind give you a different viewpoint?"
"I'm quite honestly not sure what to believe." The woman smiled, studying him with interest renewed.
"Your statement shows more wisdom that it might imply. Different questions do indeed require different answers. Be always aware. Or is it oblivious? I can never remember." Alim cocked an eyebrow and glanced at Morrigan, rubbing her temple in irritation.
"So, this is a dreaded witch of the wilds?" Alistair jested, "witch of the Wilds?" the woman said sarcastically "Morrigan must have told you that. She fancies such tales, you see, though she would never admit it. Oh, how she dances under the moon!"
Almost unbidden, the image of a naked Morrigan with hair flowing free, dancing in a moonbeam came to the fore of his mind.
"They did not come here to listen to your wild tales, Mother." Morrigan said, blushing heavily. Their eyes met for a brief instant, and from the embarrassment in her eyes he knew that it was no 'wild tale'.
He smirked at her, deepening her blush.
"True," the older woman's voice became much more direct, all jesting aside, and reached into a pack at her belt. "You came for your treaties, yes. And before you start barking-" she stated sharply, looking directly at Alistair, "-your precious seal wore off long ago. I have protected these." She pulled out three old vellum scrolls, fingering them slightly.
"You-" Alistair started, before catching up with what she said. "Oh, you protected them?" Morrigan snorted in derision at the templar.
"And why not?" her mother asked fiercely, before quite deliberately handing the treaties out towards Alim. "Take these and tell your leaders that this threat is greater than they realize."
"Thank you for returning them, milady." Alim asked, carefully putting the treaties away in his pouch as Morrigan handed them off to him.
"Such manners!" She exclaimed, eyes roving over his form appreciatively, "always in the last place you look. Like stockings." She rambled, "oh don't mind me." She let out a barking laugh, "You have what you came for." Morrigan smiled coldly.
"Time for you to go then" she started to walk away, before her mother stopped her.
"Don't be ridiculous, girl! These are your guests." She chided and Morrigan stopped, sighed, and turned back to the Wardens.
"Very well, I will show you out of the woods. Follow me." She said reluctantly, and with that, she stalked past them and back towards Ostagar.
The trip back passed largely in silence, the Wardens all lost in thought, and Morrigan was still an unknown. She split off from them around the place where the Wardens had saved the wounded soldier, not wanting to be detected by those dwelling within the castle.
They arrived back at the fortress unhindered.
"Let's get this blood and the treaties back to Duncan, we need to prepare for the Joining." Alim nodded, eager to get to his cure sooner rather than later, and before too long they were standing around Duncan's fire.
He was only glad that they did not run into Hawke on the way, he did not want her to see him like this. His skin waxy and pale and dripping with sweat, his eyes milky and bloodshot.
Duncan glanced up from the map he had been studying.
"Has your trip into the Wilds been successful?" he asked quietly. Alistair nodded, handing over the padded pouch holding the darkspawn blood, and Alim gave Duncan the treaties with shaky hands. He smiled. "Well done, all of you. It will take some time to prepare this.
"Will you give us any idea what this ritual is about, now?" Alim asked. Duncan's smile faded.
"I will not lie; we Wardens pay a heavy price to become what we are. Fate may dictate that you pay this price now rather than later. That is all I can say for the moment, and I must ask you to trust me. Alistair, take them to the old temple. The Joining shall take place there." Alistair nodded, before gesturing the others to follow him.
"Can I just give this flower to the kennel master, please. It's for a sick mabari" he asked, feeling that he had enough time left for such a task. Alistair paused for a moment, regarding the time needed and Alim's level of infection, then nodded.
Alim quickly hurried over to the kennels, pulling his cowl down to further shadow his face.
"Oh, hey, you're back!" the man said happily as he noticed Alim. "Did you find the flower I mentioned?" Alim nodded and handed it to the man. "Wonderful! This should make this poor boy feel much better. I've been thinking, and we may be able to re-imprint him with you, the guy has become a lot more docile than he was after his last master died, generally a sign of a bond. Why don't you come back after the battle, we'll see if it worked."?
"I've always wanted a dog; I'd be happy too." Alim said, saying his farewells before taking his leave and catching up with Alistair. He heard Jory talking as he came up the ramp.
"The more I hear about this Joining the less I like it." Jory said, pacing back and forward. Daveth looked up from where he was leaning against a pillar.
"Are you blubbering again?" he hissed at Jory, who glared at him.
"What's with all these damned tests? Have I not earned my place?"
"Maybe it's tradition, or maybe they're just doing it to annoy you." Daveth's voice was dripping in sarcasm as he said this. Alim glanced at Alistair, who was watching the argument uncomfortably, his position by the exit making it seem like he was some kind of sentinel, standing guard in case one of them tried to run.
"All I know is my wife is in Highever with a child on the way, and… it just doesn't seem fair." He glanced at Alistair, who averted his gaze.
"Would you have come if they had warned you?" Daveth hissed, glaring at Jory. "Maybe that's why they don't. The Wardens do what they must."
"Including sacrificing us?" Jory asked furiously.
"I'd sacrifice a lot more if it meant ending the Blight!" Daveth said, taking a step forward. Jory started to respond in kind, but Alim beat him too it.
"Enough! Both of you, stand down!" They both looked at him, mouths agape, surprised at his sudden testiness. "Arguing and fighting isn't going to get us anywhere. We're in this together, let's not make it worse."
"A wise attitude for a Gray Warden to have, Alim." Duncan said quietly as he entered the area.
Everyone turned to look at him, he held an ornate metal goblet with the gray warden standard carved into the side. His voice took on a slow, somber tone. "At last, we come to the Joining." He walked slowly to the alter, carefully placing the goblet on its worn surface. "The Grey Wardens were founded during the First Blight, when all of Thedas stood on the verge of annihilation. So it was that the first Grey Wardens drank of darkspawn blood and mastered their taint." Alim nodded, he had been expecting this.
"We're going to drink the blood of those… those creatures?" Jory, it appeared, hadn't. He had no reason to expect such a thing of course, Daveth either. He was already tainted, but he doubted anyone could truly master the taint without help, but he was beginning to understand how it felt to be one.
Minus the excruciating pain, of course.
"As the first Wardens did before us, and as we have before you. This is the source of our power, and our victory." Duncan said firmly.
"Grey Wardens are immune to the darkspawn taint." Alistair said, stepping forward. "We also gain a measure of the darkspawn's speed, stamina and strength, as well as being able to sense their presence just as mages and templars can sense the presence of people of trained to do so."
"That's what you mean by paying a price, isn't it?" Alim asked slowly, finally pulling down his cowl, revealing what the taint had reduced him to, much to Daveth and Jory's shock. "This Taint is normally fatal, so we could die during this Joining?" Duncan and Alistair nodded. An uncomfortable silence filled the air for a moment, before Daveth spoke up.
"Maybe some of us will die. Maybe we'll all die. If no one stops the Blight, we'll die for sure." Duncan nodded again, before turning to Alistair.
"We speak only a few words prior to the Joining, but they have been spoken since the first. Alistair, if you would?" The younger warden slowly bowed his head, and he spoke slowly and somberly as Duncan had.
"Join us, brothers and sisters. Join us in the shadows, where we stand vigilant. Join us as we uphold the duty that cannot be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten, and that one day we shall join you."
Duncan nodded, before taking up the now blood-filled goblet again. "Daveth, step forward." He stepped forward solemnly done and Duncan handed him the goblet. "From this moment forth, you are a Grey Warden." Daveth raised the goblet and took a drink, while Alim caught a glimpse of the sickly black liquid within and shivered.
He idly wondered if his own blood looked like that or if it was still red.
Duncan took to goblet back, and for a moment nothing happened.
But then Daveth doubled over, gripping his stomach in the same pain that had been wracking his own body for hours. He then let out a terrible, heart-wrenching scream. He looked up, and both Alim and Jory jerked back when they saw his eyes, they were pure white, no sign of pupils or the veins marring his own eyes.
"Maker's breath!" Jory swore, but Alim just watched in silence.
"I'm sorry, Daveth." Duncan said in a haunted tone as the roguish man fell to his knees, choking and clutching is throat, his body wracked with convulsions. Alim realized that he wasn't going to make it and could only bow his head as he heard Daveth breath his last. Duncan did not waste any time, immediately offering the goblet to Jory.
"Step forward, Jory."
The knight, however, backed away in fear. "But I have a wife, a child... had I known!" he stammered desperately. Duncan shut his eyes and sighed in resignation before stalking towards him.
Alim turned away, he had known that Jory didn't have the right mindset for this job but was willing to let him grow into it like he was forced to do. It seemed he was wrong however, as it seemed that Jory had failed the final test.
"There is no turning back."
"NO! You ask too much!" Jory gibbered, drawing his sword. Duncan slowly handed the goblet to Alistair, drawing dagger. "There is no glory in this!" He took a desperate swing at Duncan, but the Warden-Commander was too fast. He easily pushed the blow aside, stepped in close and ran Jory through.
"I am sorry, Jory" he whispered sullenly, before pulling the blade out and stepping back. Jory fell to the floor, dead. And then, suddenly, Alim was alone.
"Alim, step forward." Duncan said, taking the goblet back. Alim nodded, gently taking what might be his last drink. The blood's taste was indescribably horrible. "From this moment forth, you are a Grey Warden." For a long moment nothing happened.
Then the pain, steadily increasing in magnitude for so long, came to a boiling point. It was different from anything Alim had ever experienced. Voices, countless millions of voices screamed in unison, and Alim couldn't understand if they were in his head, or all around him.
Visions flashed before his eyes, visions of blood, of death and of suffering. His limbs alternated between excruciating pain and simply not existing. For a moment, he thought he was in the Fade with demons pulling at his limbs in a gruesome tug-of-war. Faintly, he felt his knees hit the chipped stone of temple floor.
'This is it; I'm dying. The taint has finally become too much for me to handle' he thought to himself. He wondered what would happen, would he be able to see those who had gone before him, or would he simply cease to exist?
Would he go to the Void? Heaven? Or maybe some other afterlife that he had never heard of before?
'Don't you dare give up Alim!' a voice hissed in the back of his head. 'It's not your time to die! You have too much left to do. Now FIGHT!'
He drew himself together, started gathering his magic. He cast metaphorical shields in his mind, knitted together his spiritual wounds, bathed his mental foes in flames.
'This is my body! I will not bow! I will not yield! I WILL NOT BREAK' And for a brief, glorious moment, he saw the world around him, saw the bodies of his companions, and saw Duncan and Alistair. In that moment, he knew that he truly was a Grey Warden. Then exhaustion claimed him, and he fell back, asleep before he hit the ground.
He heard what must have been a dragon roaring in the darkness.